Culture

Overview

People lived in Virginia for about 17,000 years before European contact. The native people had no written language and recorded their events through storytelling and symbolic drawings. Through patient work in the field and in the lab, archaeologists have reconstructed some of the history and lifeways of these first people by uncovering buried clues of their unwritten past.

Discover the ways in which artifacts, language, religion, government, economic systems, occupations, arts, housing, and clothing served as an expression of the Virginia Indian culture.